Third stop: Ampera bridge & floating market
Amanat Penderitaan Rakyat (Ampera) is the name for the bridge built across the river which was though to be un-bridgeable by locals for hundreds of years. It was built 1662-65 with Japanese reparation money. The name means “in memory of the people’s suffering”.

The floating character of the city is reflected in all the homes that were once built on stilts, dangling over the river- with mooring points for boats everywhere. Most of the river inhabitants were ethnic Chinese & Indian who orchestrated the bulk of local trade.

A lot has changed in the recent past. Palembang is Sumatra’s 2nd largest city, with a population that swelled from 470K (1961) to 1.5Million today. (transmigration?) The Musi River now looks like dirty chocolate milk, and the floating residences are being systematically evicted & torn down. It’s a port city like Baton Rouge: removed from the coast, but deep river waters make it a convenient hub for trade & product movement.

The cool thing about having visited the museum first was training my eye to recognize the traditional houses for what they were. See them in the background by the market?